EMPIRE STATE BUILDING FROM ROOF OF RCA BUILDING, 1933 wrote. "Chicago says unhesitatingly, 'I will'; Philadelphia says, 'I should'; New Orleans says, 'I used to'; Louisville says, 'Don't care if I do'; St. Louis says, 'Excuse me'; Pittsburgh says, 'Smoke up'."60 At about this time the citizens of Milwaukee were beginning to urge their government to undertake activities that in time reflected the presence of a highly developed "civic conscience" —an inward grace of which the outward signs have been its outstanding record for public health and its assumption of community responsibility for its residents' welfare, security, and even pleasure. But does New York City have an identifiable spirit of this kind? In the opinion of Allan Nevins it does, and he has found it in the essential humanity of the community—or at least of its responsible leaders. In his opinion, the "golden thread in the history of New York" has been the prevailing awareness among its leading citizens "of the indispensability of effort on behalf of the poor and unfortunate," an incidence of humanitarian activity 50 O. Henry, "The Voice of the City" (1905), quoted in Klein, 400, 401. 421